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Friday, November 11, 2011

Qixia Mountain & Qixia Temple

11.11.11 was the day of our field trip to Qixia mountain and Qixia Temple. My classmates all had exams for the past week so the field trip being on Friday must have been a huge relief to all of them! The day started off by taking the bus to school and meeting up with my class at 8:30 AM. There were so many students waiting for the busses to take us to Qixia! When I arrived, I don't think my classmates expected to see me there so they were all excited and were all saying hello to me as I got into the line! The teachers were taking attendence while we all waited in line in order by height and two lines separating the boys and the girls. Once the busses arrived I was really astound to see that the busses weren’t school busses, they were public busses! We all hopped onto the number 6, most people had seats but some people had to stand. The bus ride lasted a little over an hour, but it didn’t feel that long because so many people were talking, singing and playing games. Some of my classmates even showed me their Chinese music :P

#6 Public Bus!

Classmates inside the bus!

A little background on Qixia Mountain and Qixia Temple:

- - Northeast of Nanjing

- - 286 meters high and has three peaks: Dragon Peak, Tiger Peak and Fengxiang Peak

- - The Qixia temple is known for the Buddhist temple. It was once one of the four largest temples in history but it the temple was destroyed by fire during the Qing Dynasty (It was reconstructed later on).

- - The mountain is popular for its mapletrees

- - The mountain has many different places to view, many different temples

What I’ve noticed in China is that whenever we go on field trips, most of the students don’t really look around but instead they look at this given time as an opportunity to chat and eat all day long! I would ask them “So what are we going to be doing at the mountain?” (When I asked, I honestly didn’t know what we were doing…I figured we would be hiking!) But they said “We will eat, eat, eat and eat! And just talk with friends!”

Once we got to the mountain, we were able to go on our own and visit the different sites. We had to be back by the meeting spot by 1:50 PM to head home though. The time went by rather fast. We checked out many sites, but it was hard for my classmates to explain a lot of the historical stories behind each site, so I had some unanswered questions and thoughts. The Buddhist temple was one of many which interested me the most. The Buddha was very very big and behind the big Buddha there were a ton of little Buddha’s on the wall. I believe this temple was the newer one that I saw because as we were walking around I came across another Buddha but it looked a lot older and had cracks in the statue itself.I also noticed a bunch of maple trees while we were walking around!

There were a bunch of other students and little kids from other schools also on a field trip! (More than four other schools I believe!) I actually spotted a couple of foreigner's. Mothers with their kids. I assume they put their kids in a local chinese school because the teachers and other kids were Chinese! All of the my classmates were saying how cute the little foreign kids were!

A couple of my classmates and I infront of the temple entrance

A bunch of little Buddha's behind the big Buddha statue

Maple tree

The difference between the new Buddha temple and the old one

At around 12:30 we decided to sit down to have some lunch, little did I know to bring any food! My classmates were all so generous! They gave me snacks and treated me to some instant noodles that we could purchase there. One of my classmates also bought me a strip of bookmarks with Chinese writing and maple leave stuck onto the bookmark (chinese writing and maple leaf were laminated so it could be used as a bookmark)! Throughout the day so many of my classmates kept on giving me treat after treat! Chocolates, gummy bears, gum…! By the time we finished lunch, it was time to head down to catch the bus. Everyone was so tired at the end of the day, most of us were sleeping on each other on the bus. The ride back felt a lot shorter than on the way there!

While we were out, two of my classmates asked to go shopping with me, today! So we decided to meet up at 5 PM in front of the school gate! I got home around 3:30 so I had some time to relax before I went out again. Once we met up, we took the underground to Xin Jie Kou and went shopping for a little while, then for dinner we got SUSHI! It was delicious! I was craving sushi so much and now that I ate some, I no longer miss the taste of home too much (or as much)!

Today ended with a beautiful sunset, & tonight ended with a beautiful full moon.